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Comment by jsheard | Hacker News Reader

Typical DPIs are still all over the place depending on the demographic. Macs have been ~200dpi forever, while cheap PCs are still mostly ~100dpi, and decent PC setups tend to land somewhere in the middle with ~150dpi displays which are pretty dense but not up to Mac Retina standards. Gamers also strongly favor that middle-ground because the ultra-dense Mac-style panels tend to be limited to 60hz.

Zed started out as a Mac-only app, and that's reflected in the way their font rendering works.

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I guess that makes sense. I'm a 280ppi convert, so I judge Mac users with pity — Linux and Windows work perfectly with my 31.5" 8K display (from fuckin' 2017 btw...) but Macs can only drive it at 6K, which adds a fuzz factor.

Unless you use it at 4K, but macOS isn't really usable that way (everything way too small).

But yeah, it's 60Hz. Which has sucked ever since I accidentally got a 120Hz display, so now 60 Hz looks like 30Hz used to...

    Monitor                              Resolution       PPI
    ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    31.5" 8K                             7680 × 4320      280
    27" 5K                               5120 × 2880      218
    31.5" 6K                             5760 × 3240      210
    23" 4K                               3840 × 2160      192
    27" 4K                               3840 × 2160      163
    34" 5K ultrawide                     5120 × 2160      163
    31.5" 4K                             3840 × 2160      140
    39.7" 5K ultrawide                   5120 × 2160      140
    44.5" 5K ultrawide (LG 45GX950A-B)   5120 × 2160      125

P.S.

I had a chance to try that LG 45GX950A-B at Yodobashi Camera in Akihbara the other day, and... that measly 125ppi might overperform at the distance you have to put it at. But then again my 50-year-old eyeballs are starting to be like "anyway you need your glasses bro" so... YMMV

There are actually 218ppi 180hz panels coming soon, although they will no doubt cost a kidney for the first few years.

https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-strix-5k...

Looks good overall, but:

> USB-C with 15W power delivery for maximum compatibility

I am hoping that is a typo.

Yeah that's... not great if correct. LGs version has 90W PD.

https://tftcentral.co.uk/news/lg-27gm950b-5k-monitor-announc...

What does that mean? If the monitor only requires 15W to operate, that's a good thing, right? Unless monitors are expected to use less than that? I'm not familiar with reading monitor spec sheets.

That's output power. USB-C monitors can charge your laptop while it's connected through a single cable.

to add on to what jsheard said, for this feature to be usable (ie, charge your laptop just by plugging in the monitor), you need this number to be about what your laptop's charger is. At 15W, even a macbook air would run out of power slowly while plugged into this monitor, assuming you don't plug a second cable into your laptop. 65W or 90W is a much more normal value for a feature like this.

That all makes sense. The only thing I was missing was that this refers to power output. It seems like kind of a niche and tenuous value-add for a monitor. Why would I want to get power from my monitor?

> Why would I want to get power from my monitor?

Both at work and at home, I can plug in my monitor to my laptop with a single cable to my monitor. That single cable charges my laptop, connects the display, and passes through a usb hub that's built into the monitor that connects my keyboard and webcam. It's _incredibly_ convenient. It's also just a lot less cabling. You can think of it like a dock, built into the monitor for free.

> It seems like kind of a niche

Different workflows/circles. It's not something you're likely to use with a desktop, mainly with a laptop. It also really only works well if you use thunderbolt. It's reasonably common but probably not a majority where I work, where 90% of dev machines are macs.

Charging and video on the same cable is super cool. I take it all back.

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